


Scars and Static

by buzzbuzz34



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Acid, Blood, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gen, Self-Mutilation, Stabbing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 01:29:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buzzbuzz34/pseuds/buzzbuzz34
Summary: Spoilers for Episode 154!!!Jon attempts to leave the Archives by removing his eyes with acid and stabbing.  Neither works.  However, his vision afterwards is different, simultaneously distorted and clearer than ever before.





	Scars and Static

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the most violently graphic piece out there but if you're not about eye things then you're probably going to want to pass on this fic.

It would all be over soon. A few moments, a lot of pain, and years of learning to be blind, but he’d be free.

Not that Jon really knew what a life beyond the Institute looked like, but it wasn’t as if what it _looked _like would matter much anyway once his eyes were gone. 

The Beholding couldn’t have him. The Web could only control so much. The Lonely could only take so much from him. He was still human enough to choose this, he told himself, as he picked up a dropper of battery acid and moved it toward his face. 

They

Couldn’t

Have

Him.

It burned with an unholy pain, greater than the sum of getting ribs forcibly removed, trying to cut off a finger, of staring down a dark sun, more than hearing Martin’s rejection play over and over in his head. 

But still, Jon’s sight remained.

Maybe he hadn’t used enough acid? Maybe it wasn’t strong enough, or maybe Eric Delano hadn’t been quite so far gone, and therefore his bond with the Archives was easier to break. 

But Jon had prepared for this. Through his tears and pulsing pain, he fumbled for the metal scissors he’d set on the table as a backup plan. 

Well, it wasn’t as if he could turn back now anyway.

He jammed the point into his eyes a few times each, just to make sure, to mutilate them so much that they’d be of no use to anyone or anything. 

Jon had been crying out in pain throughout this process but had been using the soundproof room to ensure that Basira, Melanie, and Daisy, across the Archives, wouldn’t be able to hear him and interrupt him or, god forbid, try and stop him. 

However, as he opened his eyelids, ignoring the burning and the blood, and his vision began to return, Jon screamed. It was a blood-curdling scream of infinite grief that pierced through walls and planes as yet unknown.

Concern, caution, and care were all abandoned as he felt the gashes in his eyes seal up and the burns scar over. For perhaps only a couple minutes had he been truly blind, but now shaky and wavering sight was restored against all the odds. Colors were muted, compared to before, and a faint graininess overtook some details, but Jon could _see_.

“Fuck!” Jon yelled. He threw everything off the table in rage. This time when he cried, his tears were formed in blood.

Jaw quivering, head burning, Jon looked up to – somehow – see a familiar face in the doorway. The shakiness of his brutalized vision vanished entirely when his gaze fell on Martin, steady and sure, no distortion to keep his eyes from pouring over every detail, the color and vibrance that Martin made him feel inside. 

“What have you done?” Martin gasped and rushed over to Jon, kneeling beside him. It wasn’t really a question; he knew exactly what Jon had done and that the outcome was that which neither of them had wanted. 

“It didn’t work,” Jon whimpered. “It… it still has me. The Eye.”

“You really went through with it then?”

“I tried. I don’t think a normal person could have their eyes remain after dousing them in acid and stabbing them repeatedly, but I’m… I’m not human anymore, am I? I’m too far gone.”

Jon fell forward into Martin, who held him tightly, even as Jon’s bloody tears quickly stained through his shirt. They were both too far gone. The only possibility for a real escape had failed, and there was nothing more that they could do besides hold on and cry over every possibility and dream they had lost. 

Several minutes later, there came a knock at the door. 

“Jon? Are you alright in there?”

In an instant, Martin pulled away from the embrace. There came a rush of static and a chill as the color literally faded from him. Even though Jon -The Archivist - could still see Martin clearly stood a short distance away, his appearance grew matte and monotone, from his clothes to his skin to the bloodstains that coated him.

Jon’s hand reached out through the noise and found Martin’s. Their eyes met through scars and static, piercing through invisibility for a companionship that Entities and Gods still couldn’t sever. 

“Holy fuck.”

“Jon!”

“What happened?”

A flurry of questions was launched at Jon from the three women that charged into the room. They all seemed oblivious to Martin’s presence and rushed over to Jon, who reluctantly pulled his hand away. 

“What happened here?” Basira repeated, and Jon sighed, watching a colorless Martin step to the side, out of their way. 

“I thought I’d found a way to leave the Institute. I’m too far gone, but it might still work for any of you,” he said and slid Eric’s tape across the table. 

“What, you gouged your own eyes out or something?” Daisy cried, aghast.

Melanie, meanwhile, looked for a long time at the tape, at the blood and the acid, glancing back and forth between them, a curiosity and hunger in her eyes.

“We need to get him to the hospital,” Basira urged, and put an arm around Jon as if to try and lift him, support him until they could get him to medical care. The why and how could wait; he needed a doctor first.

But Jon shrugged her off. “It doesn’t matter. I heal fast anyway. Even stabbing my eyes doesn’t seem to last long. I’m not sure there’s much a regular hospital could do for me now anyway.”

"Have you... have you seen? Look..." Daisy handed over her phone, its front camera open so that Jon could see himself.

His eyes were intact, but they and the area around them was pock-marked and charred from deep gashes. The marks themselves were bright white, while Jon’s irises were hidden entirely behind misshapen redness and bloody flesh. He shouldn’t be able to see. There was no way a mortal person would be able to see through the brutalization. 

But the Watcher wasn’t done with its Archivist yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this brutality lol  
This isn't exactly my prediction for the next episode, however I'm pretty sure it's not going to work out the way anybody in the show expects it to...  
Anyway, if you want to find more of my writing (most of which is less violent and angsty than this), head on over to kellanswritingblog.tumblr.com, or come chat on my personal at celsidebottom.tumblr.com <3


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